Topics published this photo last week of a Changi prisoner-of-war camp in Singapore in World War II.
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Lambton’s Ethel Jones told us her father-in-law was in the picture (we’ve circled him in red). His name was Robert Edward Jones.
“He was a prisoner of war and a cook in Changi camp. He ended up having his jaw broken for stealing food from the cookhouse and taking it to prisoners who were too sick to get up to get their meal,” Ethel said.
“The Japanese were letting them starve.”
Ethel said a Japanese soldier hit him in the jaw with the butt of a rifle.
Robert survived the war but contracted the disease beriberi, which is caused by a deficiency of thiamine (vitamin B1).
“He was dreadfully swollen in the stomach,” she said.
In his last years, he spent more time in hospital than he did at home.
“He had a heart attack while walking back to his ward in hospital. He’d just posted a letter to say he had the all-clear and was coming home,” she said.
He died in 1955 at age 53. Heart problems are linked to beriberi.
“Considering what he went through, it’s a wonder his heart lasted so long,” Ethel said.
Robert lived at Merewether when he went to war. When he returned home he lived at Broadmeadow, before moving to Lambton.
Ethel said he only ever talked about the war “if he had a few beers in him”.
“I believe he once said if ever there was another war, he’d kill his two sons before he’d let them go through what he went through,” she said.
She said he was 13 to 14 stone when he went to war. When he returned home “he was only six stone”.
“I remember my mother-in-law saying they walked right past him. They didn’t recognise him.”
Shop Full of Dreams
Topics wrote last week about Greek cafes and milk bars in Australia. This included the Parthenon Milk Bar and The Astoria in Hunter Street.
Kasper Beker sent us this 1929 advertisement about The Niagara cafe, which was also in Hunter Street.
“My mother worked at The Astoria, The Embassy and The Niagara cafes during the late ‘50s to the ‘70s,” she said.
Merewether’s Angelo Koutts told Topics the Niagara operated in Hunter Street from 1898. He believed the Niagara was the first milk bar in Australia.
A report titled Shop Full of Dreams: Ethnic Small Business in Australia tells the story of the Karanges family, who owned cafes, fish shops and milk bars.
“Their life in Australia has been tied to the Niagara cafe in Newcastle,” it said.
The Niagara cafe was a story of “chain migration of peasant farmers from the small Greek village of Vlahokerasia, on the Peloponnese, to Newcastle”.
News about the Niagara cafe filtered back to Greece by word and letter. It entered the dreams of many Vlahokerasia villagers.
These dreams consisted of emigration to a new country, working in a cafe and “saving enough to buy a small business of their own”.
They dreamt of marrying and raising a family in a new country “where the children could prosper and get a good education”.
It was Angelo Burgess (his Greek name was Bourtzos) who started the Niagara cafe, having moved to Australia from the US.
Brothers Michael and Theo Karanges (who was Burgess's godson) arrived in 1912 to work there.
“Theo stayed on to take over the business when Burgess died, while Michael opened up his own Niagara cafe a few miles away in the Newcastle suburb of Hamilton,” it said.
The Niagara cafe in Hamilton closed after the building was partially destroyed in the 1989 Newcastle earthquake.
